We walked through the gates of the mysterious "Living Museum" our guide had been hyping us up about all day. What in the world is a l- oh, it's a zoo!

We headed over to a small concrete enclosure near the front entrance, which housed an absolutely gigantic crocodile. Wow!

The zookeeper waltzed over with a bucket, and without pause or explanation, flung something high into the air, which arced down and into the crocodile pen. What in the- holy shit! It's a guinea pig! And it's still alive!

Acting with frightening speed, the formerly-lethargic crocodile launched out of the water and up onto the land. My stomach dropped at the speed with which the crocodile moved. Don't these things normally nap on the riverside? They're normally hard to tell apart from logs.

My mind didn't have time to complete this thought though because suddenly the crocodile was snapping its jaws shut on the poor little guinea pig, who hadn't even had time to process the fact that a moment before he had been flying, let along formulate any kind of plausible defense against a full-frontal attack by a freaking crocodile. He didn't even run, he just looked around for a split second like "Holy shit, did you guys just see me flying??" and then he was inside a crocodile's mouth.

The guinea pig screamed in vain for help as the crocodile backed into the pond of water where it had been chilling just seconds before. I felt terrible for the guinea pig, but also wondered who he thought was going to come help him at this stage. I'm so sorry dude, but you're the only one who doesn't know it's over. If you look up "fucked" in the dictionary, there's a photo of this guinea pig in the crocodile's mouth.

"Wiiiiieeeeeee!" the guinea pig protested in an anguished cry against my cold logic.

Don't crocodiles drown their prey? I waited for the crocodile to submerge and hopefully put the guinea pig out of his misery. It seemed like a full minute had gone by with the guinea pig just staring out at me from inside his teeth jail. Wailing. Come on, you assh- and in that instant the crocodile snapped its jaws, flipping the guinea pig completely into its mouth. Oh okay, that's probably just as well- And then the crocodile dipped down into the water.

Whew. I'm glad that's over. Guinea pig versus crocodile is the most unfair fight I've ever seen. I was fascinated and nauseous at the same time. Sure, this is how nature works, but it's not like previous life experience or even evolution had prepared the guinea pig in any way for a crocodile. You like to see a bit more of a fighting chance in your Wild Kingdom dramas.

I turned around and instantly, the zookeeper was flinging another guinea pig high up onto the fence of the leopard enclosure next to us. Oh god! This isn't over!

The tiny leopard lept up into the air and caught the guinea pig the second it hit the fence, like Jerry Rice catching a touchdown pass. An impressive athletic feat. Wow, and I thought the first guinea pig didn't have a chance! The leopard ran off with the guinea pig in its merciless jaws, still alive.

I had barely processed this when I looked down into the bucket the zookeeper had briefly set on the ground. A third guinea pig looked up at me nervously. The sole survivor. Oh dude, I hope you have your affairs in order. I don't think you're going back to the guinea pig hut or wherever they keep you guys.

Quickly, so quickly we were marching over to another set of crocodile enclosures. Wow, these guys are huge too!

But we quickly skipped past Romeo and Juliet and to a third enclosure that was shrouded in vegetation. I peeked over the low concrete wall and saw a scaly tail. I had to really lean over the edge to see the rest of the body. Oh wow, it's a river crocodile! Its freakishly long and narrow snout was clogged with terrifying pointy teeth. Man, that is a macabre customer-

CRACK! All of a sudden I didn't know what was happening at all. There was a blur just to my left as I instinctively jumped back, not taking even a split second to check what was behind me. My body just jumped all on its own. And not a moment too soon, as the crocodile had somehow closed the space between us and lept up, much much higher than I would have ever imagined a crocodile jumping, its entire head above the concrete walls of the enclosure, and snapped its gnarled jaws loudly in the air.

Jesus fuck! What is happening-

I saw another blur in my peripheral vision and suddenly realized the zookeeper was dangling the third guinea pig over the river crocodile's enclosure. The crocodile lept up again and snapped its frightening jaws at the guinea pig with a loud CRACK!

Oh my god, that's right where I had been standing, I'd be in that thing's mouth right now if I hadn't jumped back. This is crazy!

The zookeeper flung the guinea pig end over end into the crocodile's enclosure and I heard the crocodile's jaws snap again loudly. Well that must be the end of tha- Something rustled through the undergrowth inside the enclosure. How cow! The guinea pig got away. It was perched nervously at the edge of the crocodile's pond, breathing rapidly.

We leaned over the enclosure, watching with baited breath to see what would happen to the guinea pig. I looked over at the crocodile and suddenly my heart stopped. The crocodile wasn't watching the guinea pig. He was watching US. He wanted to see how far we were going to lean into the enclosure in our attempt to get photos, in case he could get a much bigger meal than just a measly guinea pig. Jeeeeeesus that's creepy-

Suddenly and with terrifying speed, the river crocodile came absolutely hauling ass through the vegetation, an image I will never ever forget, as I'd had no idea whatsoever crocodiles could run that fast.

I'm officially way more scared of crocodiles now that I've seen that. I don't know if the guinea pig had ever seen or heard of a crocodile before this moment, but he reacted by leaping into the water, which was both a terrible choice and his only choice. He swam valiantly with his tiny useless legs for a split second before the croc was on top of him and thus ended the short, very confusing life of guinea pig #3.

In a daze from the rapid-fire life and death happening all around us, we staggered away from the crocodile pit and I was promptly handed a python.

Jeez I hope I don't smell like guinea pigs.

Inside the reptile house we watched cobras writhe over each other and an african viper slither toward the glass. Outside, the rain began to pour and dripped down from the corrugated tin roof of the reptile house.

Outside, we found two chimpanzees in a jail-like enclosure. One paced back and forth while the other flung a soccer ball quite accurately at our heads, stopped only by the bars between us.

I turned around and one of the zookeepers was holding a juvenile chimp. Oh my god! That is the most adorable thing I've ever-

Wait, are we- Without warning, the chimp was suddenly climbing into my arms and voila, I was holding a chimpanzee.

This is amazing! Mike, get a photo, I can't get my phone out as I have my hands full of chimpanzee!

I felt simultaneously in rapture and worried that I was holding the chimp too firmly or too loosely, or that it might change its mind and bite my face off, as is a chimp's prerogative. I looked into the chimp's eyes and saw its soft and quiet gentleness.

This is one of the coolest things I've ever experienced.

It turned out the chimp's name was Flora, and she was rescued from the poachers who had killed her parents. She was still traumatized. I have very mixed feelings about zoos but this seemed like the best kind of zoo situation, caring for an animal that could not be returned to the wild. Flora was said to prefer the company of humans and to abhor all forms of aggression.

I had such mixed feelings about this place. On one hand it was a terrible zoo. Is it even a zoo? Er, living museum? And yet, they were doing something good with Flora here. And, this is Burundi. What do they even know about zoos here? I had a conversation with the museum manager about the enclosures and how they could improve conditions for the animals there. He was all ears and took copious notes, so that was at least something.

Eventually I had to give Flora back and we staggered out of the living museum, completely turned upside down by the cruelty and the grace, the beauty and shocking violence... and as we ducked through the gate I looked back over my shoulder once more just to make sure that river crocodile wasn't rushing through the brush at us like some goddamned nightmare come to life.

One of the big highlights for us in Burundi was visiting a ceremonial village, which culminated in a drum ceremony that was wildly entertaining. The drummers marched into the clearing formed into a procession, loudly hammering drums they were carrying on their own heads:

Bored of impressing us with their head-drumming, the Burundi drummers settled into an array and took turns dancing and doing various jumps and flips in the center of the half-circle, never breaking the insistent, thundering rhythm of the drums.

After the performance we had the opportunity to jam with the Burundi drummers, and I did my best to whiten up the proceedings with some hot, hot rhythms.

Nearby huts demonstrated the way the people had lived in Burundi before modern times, inside giant wigs:

Burundi's capital of Bujumbura is a shockingly clean city, especially for being situated in the world's absolute poorest country. In many ways, Burundi is what people in the US imagine Haiti to be. It is the actual poorest country in the world, and almost completely deforested due to an unsustainable over-use of the land.

But, every week the public in Bujumbura bands together to clean up any trash in the streets. I found this fascinating, as I'm always intersted in why things are they way they are in different places. In this case local culture seemed to counteract the lack of money. Way to go Burundi, Africa could use a whole lot more of this.

We visited a few different monuments around Burundi dedicated to their Hero of Independence and Hero of Democracy.

Both were promptly murdered for their heroism.

I was impressed by the efforts Burundi had gone to in order to integrate the Hutus, Tutsi and pygmy people after the ethnic violence and genocide that had engulfed Rwanda and Burundi both in the 1990s. They'd made efforts to realign everyone's identify as Burundians instead of one of these three ethnic groups, and emphasized peace and unity in daily life. Having traveled extensively in Africa now, it seems to me like tribal identity and the related conflicts are one of the biggest problems and deterrents to both peace and development that nearly every country there faces, so I was impressed by what they'd managed to accomplish with this in Burundi.

Like much of Africa, however, Burundi was suffering from a serious gasoline shortage. We drove past an impossibly long line for the gas station, which might have been more or less impressive if the gas station wasn't too far away to even see it yet in this photo.

We did stop by Burundi's official tourism office, which can be summed up absolutely and completely by this photo:

We were unable to find whoever that empty chair belonged to. They were probably out touristing somewhere.

Outside the city we visited a beautiful range of waterfalls:

As well as the source of the Nile, which is naturally a pyramid. A local boy wanted his photo taken with the prestigious white men who had discovered the source of the Nile, so of course we obliged:

On our final day in Burundi we visited huge Lake Tanganyika, the second deepest lake in the world.

And stopped by another national park, this time boarding a long wooden boat. Our boat motored through the river, occasionally passing hippos and the odd crocodile or egret on the shore.

When we reached the confluence of the river and the lake, the boats far out on the water looked like they were floating in the air.

The brown river water and blue water of the lake slammed into each other at this point, creating a bizarre contrast.

We also visited a pygmy village, where we were greeted with a long and lovely song and dance welcoming us to the village. The entire tribe clapped a fast beat in unison and the women stomped their feet to the beat so hard it shook the ground beneath us.

Awww, you kids carved an action figure of me as a kangaroo! You sweethearts.

After touring the village and the tiny school, we donated money to buy them more desks so the pygmy kids didn't have to sit on top of each other just to learn some French.

Back in town, in a local non-living museum, I finally had time to ask how they play this game I'd seen all over Africa, usually involving several small holes dug in the ground that are filled with a specific number of pebbles.

The game is called Mancala, or African Stone Game if you can't remember the name. It's one of the oldest surviving games in the world, and was played at different times all the way from Africa to the Middle East and from Southeast Asia to Eastern Europe. The goal is to capture all the stones, and on your turn you distribute the stones from one of the holes into the others, gaining the ability to capture stones based on the number in each hole. So the strategy revolves around counting ahead and anticipating how many stones will end up in each hole at a given time.

I liked the idea of a game you could play anywhere by digging a few little holes in the ground and collecting some pebbles, though the game does have one major disadvantage in that it's really hard to "accidentally" flip the board over when you're tired of losing.

Another day we drove out to a national park bordering a tea plantation.

On the way there I was impressed by the guy I saw hitching a ride on a semi-truck by just hanging onto the back from his bike at full highway speeds.

I didn't notice this until I saw the photo, but that bad motherfucker isn't even sitting on the seat with his feet on the pedals, like he's ready for unexpected action or, you know, to ride a bike. He's casually sitting diagonally on the frame like there's zero chance this whole thing goes sideways in a heartbeat.

The tea plantation was full of green and lush hillsides.

Our lovely guide explained that as an old man, he didn't expect to live much longer. He was 54.

He explained that people don't live long in Africa and especially Burundi. I guess so, dude, you're only 8 years older than me. Wait, am I only going to live 8 more years? Maybe I need to quit spending so much time in Africa.

Our guide spoke English well, but like everyone in Burundi had some very odd pronunciations of certain words, like our main guide who pointed out "fields of lice" and horrified me until I realized he pronounced Rs as Ls.

Our park guide showed us the local animals and plants, including the plants used as bush medicine.

"This one here solves the problems and prevents premature beef."

I nodded, figuring this tree leaf somehow settled arguments between people. No reason to beef if you don't gotta. Eventually Mike pointed out that the guide was probably saying "premature death".

Too late! I have already fallen in love with the term "premature beef" and have been using it daily ever since. So please, if you love your family, ask your doctor about premature beef. Stay safe out there.

Leaving the national park, we ended up with a large gang of small children chasing our car. It's very common in Africa that when local children see you, they expect that you've brought them candy. It's slightly disappointing when you realize their enthusiasm isn't for your glowing personality or casual charm but instead that they see you instead as a giant man-sized candy dispenser. Mike and I began to joke about rolling down the window and just vomiting wrapped candy all over the kids like a slot machine paying out.

Now the crowd chasing our car and calling out for candy grew larger and larger until it was a mob, and they were running after our car as we bumped along the dirt road. Laughing, I turned around and realized three kids were hanging off our spare tire. They were gonna get some candy if they had to ride this tire all the way back to Bujumbura! Our driver stopped and got out, shooing them away so none of them would get hurt. But the second we pulled away they were back there again. A dozen other children sprinted alongside the car, yelling out for candy.

"Mzungu! Mzungu!" they yelled out, the local world for "White person". We asked our guide the local word for "black kids" and called it back to them. "White person!" "Black kids!" "White person!" "Black kids!"

Eventually (and after a very, very long time) we outran the kids before they swarmed the car and ate us alive for not having any candy.

I cracked up later that night when I looked it up online and learned that the word Mzungu literally translates to "wandering ghost". Kind of fitting, really. We are quite pale and have just wandered into their lives out of nowhere, without explanation.

What in the hell are we doing here, anyway?